What to do if you haven’t much time

  • Deadhead perennials, bedding and basket plants and roses to encourage more flowers. Apply high potash fertiliser (e.g. tomato food) to enable the growth of lots more flowers.

 

  • Mow regularly if the grass is growing. If the soil is very dry, raise the blades to leave the grass longer, which helps it to stay alive in a drought. Trim the egdes of the lawn – it makes such a difference!

 

Other jobs

Trees, Shrubs & Hedges

  • Continue to deadhead roses
  • Trim lavender lightly to remove dying flowers
  • Give a final trim to your hedges
  • Prune rambling roses
  • Propagate clematis by layering
  • Complete the summer pruning of wisteria
  • Continue to take semi-ripe cuttings
  • Layer rhododendrons and azaleas

 

Perennials

  • Cut back perennials that have collapsed
  • Start dividing perennials (if you’re around to water them well in the coming weeks)
  • Take cuttings of alpines, penstemons and other slightly tender plants for overwintering under protection
  • Plant daffodils, narcissi, colchicums and madonna lilies
  • Pot prepared hyacinths and other bulbs for flowers at Christmas
  • Divide congested clumps of snowdrops (if you know where they are!); take care to minimise damage to their roots if they have started developing already
  • Continue collecting ripening seeds
  • Mulch soil around cut down perennials to tidy, improve the soil and suppress annual weeds
  • Continue to propagate carnations and pinks
  • If peony leaves are looking starved, give them a little liquid feed to keep them going

 

Annuals and bedding

  • Continue to deadhead and feed annuals (tomato food)
  • Take cutting from pelargoniums, fuchsias and other tender perennials
  • Collect seeds from hardy annuals

 

Containers

  • Continue watering and feeding plants in containers

Lawns

  • Mow the lawn regularly
  • Apply a fertilizer with high potash content
  • Don’t water unless absolutely necessary
  • Prepare for sowing seed or laying turf next month

Vegetables and herbs

  • Sow green manure crops
  • Harvest onions
  • Harvest beans and freeze them
  • Sow Japanese onions, salad crops, spring cabbages, parsley
  • Continue earthing up celery
  • “Stop” outdoor tomatoes by pinching out the growing tips
  • Pot up other herbs such as chives
  • Take semi-ripe cuttings from shrubby herbs

Fruit

  • Harvest early apples and pears
  • Continue pruning summer-fruiting raspberries – chop already fruited canes down to the ground
  • Summer-prune trained fruit trees
  • Plant new strawberry plants

Under cover

  • Check greenhouse heaters
  • Damp down regularly in the morning (NOT in the evening)